Arne’s Welding Ltd. achieves SAFE Work Certification by Made Safe
Arne’s Welding Ltd. achieves SAFE Work Certification by Made Safe
Posted on April 18, 2019
As the manufacturing sector partner for SAFE Work Manitoba Certified, Made Safe works with members to assess their readiness, provide support and help companies achieve certification. The process is modeled on internationally-recognized best practices and has demonstrated positive outcomes for individual companies and the industry overall. Certified manufacturers have safer and healthier workplaces, better control of workplace hazards, fewer injuries and illnesses, more engaged and productive employees, and a significant rebate on their WCB premiums.
As the SAFE Work Certified by Made Safe process gains traction, we wanted to showcase just a few of the manufacturers leading the way. It’s our hope that telling their stories and sharing the lessons they learned during the certification process will help pave the path for other manufacturers moving forward.
Arne’s Welding Ltd.
Established in 1954, Arne’s has served the trailer industry for over 60 years. Arne Doucette, a welder by trade, saw a need to build a better product that was available to the market in his day. Year after year, trailer after trailer, Arne’s remains the leader in the trailer industry.
Q. Tell us more about your company, number of staffs, markets you serve and products you make.
Arne’s Welding has been supplying the Transportation Industry with High Quality products since 1954. Arne’s is a privately-owned company that engineers and manufactures transportation solutions for the construction and mining industries, the railway industry and most recently for the military. Our products are available from coast to coast in Canada through our network of full-service dealerships. Arne’s is based in Winnipeg, Manitoba and has approximately 120 employees.
Q. What should readers know about your company vision and culture?
Our goal at Arne’s is to supply the vocational trailer market with the highest quality and value possible. We realize that our customers must be successful for Arne’s to be successful. After being in business in this industry for 65 years, it’s always great to see customers coming back to us to provide them with the solutions they need and have come to expect from us.
Q. What barriers did you need to address internally before making the commitment to pursue certification and how did you overcome these hurdles?
Before starting the process to get certified we were unsure as what to do. We knew we had a strong Safety Management System but didn’t know if it was up to certification standards. Luckily the staff at Made Safe are incredibly helpful! Made Safe guided us on the path to certification, first with helping us get any additional training required for certification. The second (and probably most helpful) step was the gap audit. Without their help we would probably still be trying to figure out what needed to be done.
Q. Did you learn any safety or business lessons throughout the process that might help others make the decision to become certified?
Don’t wait! We waited before becoming active with Made Safe, despite hosting their launch event. We should have been working with them as soon as they started. We learned so much as a company with their help; the biggest lesson we learned was: DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT. The gap audit confirmed that we were doing the right things but couldn’t prove it in a document. After that we re-vamped our documentation and recording processes so that we could show our due diligence.
Q. What would you say is the biggest benefit of certification so far?
Achieving certification has no doubt played a big role in making us a better company. It has shown our workforce that we are serious about keeping them safe and creating a great work environment. We realize that without our employees we cannot produce our trailers to the high standards our customers demand.
Q. How has your membership with Made Safe helped your organization?
Working with Made Safe provides access to training and consulting services that were not previously available for the manufacturing sector. Courses like “Train the Trainers” help us with getting high level safety training to our employees in-house, and consulting with Made Safe has helped us when refining our existing policies, developing new policies and other safety documents.